Micro-Surveys: The Future of Data Collection

Written By

Annie

In a previous blog post, we discussed how Gen-Z students have developed an 8 second filter in order to deal with the sheer amount of information making it into their daily lives. In order to combat this, institutions have started turning to push-notifications to ensure that students are receiving all of the necessary and relevant information that pertains to them on an individual level. Because most students admit to not checking their email regularly, mobile push notifications allow admins the ability to notify their students of important information quickly and efficiently. However, students are not the only ones who can benefit from mobile platforms.

The Challenge with Traditional Data Collection

In order to collect data from their students, institutions often turn to long, cumbersome surveys that often yield inaccurate or incomplete results. One reason for this is that surveys are often distributed too late after an event or service to return any useful information. For example, asking a student if the problem they were facing was solved, a month after a counselling session, would not be reliable since many external factors may have contributed to the outcome by this point. With so much going on in the lives of today's students, they often do not retain information that they do not consider relevant to them. However, information that students may deem irrelevant can be extremely useful and insightful for institutions; this is why collecting data in a timely manner is so important.

Student-First Data Collection

In order to get students to answer surveys efficiently while the information is still fresh in their minds, many institutions are turning to micro-surveys. These surveys are short, one-question inquiries designed to return the most accurate results through their brevity and timely delivery.

Micro-Survey: short, one-question inquiries designed to return the most accurate results through their brevity and timely delivery.

Longer, generic surveys often include questions that do not pertain to every student, which could bias results. Micro-surveys however, can be directed to the right students, at the right time, via mobile. For example, if an institution wanted to know how effective students are finding a tutoring session, they could arrange a one-question survey to appear on a student’s phone once they have checked out of the session. By making sure that only students who have actually attended a tutoring session are answering this survey, admins can feel confident that the data they are collecting is accurate.

With the Ready Education Platform, these micro-survey questions can be customized to each individual purpose, and can be easily changed by administrators. By changing the micro-surveys regularly, institutions can gather true insights from their students with limited effort, all in real time. For example, if an institution recently developed a Student Leadership Center and wanted to determine student feedback, they could send out a micro survey asking "How did you find the new Leadership Center?" (shown below).

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How Other Institutions are Incorporating Micro-Surveys

Student feedback is an important aspect of higher education that allows administrators to quantify the impact of their student services, health services, events, etc. By sending micro-surveys to their students, institutions can make targeted adjustments to not only better serve the student population, but improve data collection procedures as well.

See here how institutions like Youngstown State University have benefited from implementing student feedback into their supplemental instruction.

For more information regarding the benefits of micro-surveys, book a one-on-one consultation with one of our product specialists.